Supervising a mikva in the Baka neighborhood in Jerusalem is not like supervising a mikva elsewhere. [This mikva] also had a small banquet room. Why, you may ask, does one need a banquet room in a mikva? For the brides. The mostly Sephardi population of Baka, like Sephardim elsewhere, had a custom of accompanying new brides on their first visit to the mikva, which they would follow with a small feast on the premises. Whereas the Ashkenazi and Yemenite brides would come quietly only with their mothers, the Moroccan, Kurdish, Iraqi, and other Sephardi brides would be brought to the mikva with singing and dancing, accompanied by the entire clan -- from both sides of the family. (Rumor had it that the Sephardi mothers-in-law like to "check out" the bride before the wedding. Brides of today are less disposed to continue this custom.) They would all crowd into the small bathing room with the bride. One would wash her hair for her, another her back; a third would help with her nails.
This made for embarrassing situations sometimes. Naturally, not every bride appreciated this custom, which was, after all, only a custom and not required by halacha [Jewish law]. Some of them didn't mind the group simcha [celebration]. But if I saw she was a modest bride who was embarrassed by the procedure, I refused to let any of the other women enter with her. In answer to their sometimes quite vocal protests, I warned them that if her embarrassment would cause her to become unduly upset, it could bring on her period. They understood the significance of this the night before her wedding, and it became my secret weapon in warding off overzealous mothers- and sisters-in-law.
Another battle I waged was against allowing children to enter with the crowd. Women were embarrassed to meet local neighborhood children who lived on their street. In one Jerusalem mikva, a group of children accompanying a bride met their teacher in the waiting room, a piece of information they gleefully shared with their classmates the next day in school. In the interest of modesty, the rabbinate insisted that children not join in the festivities, but it was another battle with custom.
Some brides had reasons other than modesty to turn them off this procedure. One Moroccan bride came to me the day before her immersion and explained that an operation had left her bald, a fact she had hidden from her in-laws. I took care to give her a tiny, private room and told her prospective relatives that there was no room for them to come in. But she didn't want them to get too suspicious, so first she immersed herself normally, and then she let them in and dipped again -- in a long, wet wig.
There were other cases of brides who had undergone operations, including mastectomies, who didn't want their scars so widely publicized, or girls who had skin diseases. I rode shotgun for them and kept the wolves at bay. Naturally, after any woman with a serious skin problem immersed herself, we let out the water and gave special attention to the cleaning of that mikva before it was used again.
I also kept out friendly relatives when a bride came who was pregnant, and we had our fair share of those. Some of them were at the stage where it wasn't noticeable with clothes on, but it would have been were they seen in the nude. I asked one in her fourth month how she planned to hide it; eventually [the relatives] would find out. "No problem," she answered, "we're going to England after the wedding." One bride came to immerse herself in her ninth month. One night she came to the mikva, the next day she got married, and two days later she gave birth.
I also had to contend with attempted bribery. Some nonreligious brides tried to pay me to give them the certified receipt that indicated they had been to the mikva. Without this receipt, a rabbi in Israel will not perform a wedding when he knows the couple is not religious. He doesn't usually request to see it when he knows the bride and groom, and they are obviously Orthodox. One girl brought her father, a policeman, to threaten me if I didn't give her the necessary receipt without her having immersed herself, but I stood my ground. "I'm surprised that a policeman would ask me to do a thing like that. What will people say when they hear. ..." Well, he shut up, and she dunked (and thanked me in the end).
One Russian woman came who was newly religious and still waiting for her husband, a refusenik, to be released from the Soviet Union. Even though she had no idea how long it would take, she came every month faithfully. "I want to get used to it," she told me once. I suspected she also wanted to be ready just in case he would be suddenly released.
